The Importance of Workforce Analytics & Remote Work

When the pandemic hit in 2020, it brought a huge deal of change to how jobs operate. Almost every sector has shifted to the remote setup wherein people can work anywhere. Until now, this setting is prevalent and the most sought-after by applicants—for good reasons. Besides the money it can save, people can plan their workstations or just stay at home with the work-from-home setup. 

However, while it offers many benefits, some employees become disengaged. This disengagement negatively impacts the business overall. Hence, it’s crucial to understand the root cause of this problem to address this properly.

One tool that can help you with this is analytics—especially ones dedicated to understanding your employees’ behavior—known as workforce analytics. This blog will explore more about it and why it’s important for remote teams. Let’s get started!

What is Workforce Analytics?

Like any other kind of analytics, workforce analytics collects and analyzes data to give you insights for better and more informed decision-making. The only difference is that it is more focused on your employees, whether they work in an office, hybrid, or remotely. 

Aside from people, workforce analytics also looks at the work itself, taking into account any aspect that can affect employee performance, including technology, workflows, and company management. For instance, if you’re working in the HR sector, workforce analytics will give you data insights to improve your hiring process. All these can help your business thrive in the long run.

Let’s take a better look at how important workforce analytics is in your business.

Importance of Workforce Analytics in Remote Teams

Managing remote teams will always come with challenges for both managers and employees. They may have questions that are like, are remote teams able to carry out tasks effectively? Or are they motivated enough to perform their responsibilities? These kinds of questions can be best answered by workforce analytics. It takes a look at:

Operational Efficiency 

Workforce analytics can help improve your business’s operations, no matter the industry, by leveraging the data and insights it collects. At most, the areas where further training or inefficiencies exist, such as complex workflows and lack of resources.

Having a clear understanding of these weak points in employee performance can bring practical ideas that can improve your workflow. Once addressed, you’ll be sure to have your remote teams at their best, carrying out tasks better than ever.

Productivity 

Another area where workforce analytics can be utilized is productivity. And there are many productivity-tracking software available that can help you monitor how your employees work in real-time. All these tools can give you insights into performance gaps and unbalanced workloads. Hence, you’ll be able to come up with better solutions to eliminate those gaps and improve the overall productivity of your staff.

Engagement

Disengagement may be one of the common problems in remote teams, considering that they don’t see their workmates and bosses in person. This disengagement has a significant impact on their productivity and performance. Thus, it’s crucial to understand what causes this to keep your remote teams engaged—through workforce analytics.

You may give out pulse surveys from time to time to get feedback. These are short surveys that focus on specific elements of remote working, like flexibility, connectivity, way of working, and even team collaboration. By getting ahold of their feedback, you can make more informed decisions to keep them motivated. Use employee engagement software like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, and Connectteam for this process.

Collaboration 

While it is true that the rise of remote working has increased the usage of tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, there can still be problems with communication and virtual connections, which may affect the team’s overall work performance. That’s when the concept of workforce analytics comes in to help. You  will need to track team performances through various analytics tools and analyze metrics to identify areas of improvement. Then, address accordingly. For instance, use collaboration tools like Asana or Trello. 

Well-Being

Based on a study, remote employees are facing a higher burnout rate than those who work on-site. Along with physical and psychological distress, work stress and burnout can result in low employee morale, compromised performance and productivity, absenteeism, and, worst, turnover. 

Thus, it’s important for employers to ask for feedback to find ways to help them thrive in the remote setup. Get insights into how they work at home and even ask for suggestions on how you can improve their work. By prioritizing the well-being of your remote teams, you’ll cultivate a positive and supportive culture, which will then reflect on their work performance.

The Bottom Line

Overall, workforce analytics is an invaluable tool for organizations in the current world of remote work. It enables employers to understand their employee’s performance and engagement levels so that they can implement policies and initiatives that will help them stay productive and engaged. However, always know that communication will still be the best way to understand your employees better. So, inform them about workforce analytics as you get started and do frequent check-ins about what they feel about it! Doing all these can help your workforce thrive in this era of remote work.